Latest / Cookbook Love Podcast / Episode 425: Inside America's Test Kitchen with Steph Pixley and The New Cookie

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Episode 425: Inside America's Test Kitchen with Steph Pixley and The New Cookie · Cookbook Love Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker: You are listening to the Cookbook Love Podcast with
• 0:04
  Speaker: Maggie Greene, episode number four twenty five.
• 0:11
  Speaker: Welcome to the cookbook Love
• 0:12
  Speaker: Podcast, a podcast that
• 0:14
  Speaker: celebrates cookbook readers,
• 0:16
  Speaker: buyers, collectors, writers, and
• 0:18
  Speaker: clubs.
• 0:19
  Speaker: And now your host, cookbook
• 0:21
  Speaker: author, culinary dietitian, and
• 0:23
  Speaker: cookbook writing coach, Maggie
• 0:25
  Speaker: Greene.
• 0:31
  Speaker: Hi, everybody.
• 0:32
  Speaker: Welcome back to another episode of the Cookbook Love Podcast.
• 0:35
  Speaker: How's everybody doing today?
• 0:37
  Speaker: We are headed into Halloween Trick or treat weekend.
• 0:41
  Speaker: And I hope all the cooks and bakers and cookbook lovers that
• 0:45
  Speaker: are listening are doing well.
• 0:48
  Speaker: This is a great time of year for food.
• 0:51
  Speaker: So many amazing seasonal things that we get to cook and prepare.
• 0:55
  Speaker: And I hope that you are excited about the season as I am.
• 1:00
  Speaker: Before we dive into our podcast episode today, just a quick note
• 1:04
  Speaker: that enrollment for my flagship publishing program Get Paid to
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  Speaker: get Published closes very soon.
• 1:11
  Speaker: If you have felt the pull to see your recipes in a real print
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  Speaker: cookbook, working with a publisher who pays you and a
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  Speaker: team on your side, this is your moment to stop wondering and
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  Speaker: start pitching inside.
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  Speaker: Get paid to get published.
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  Speaker: You get my framework, live group
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  Speaker: So if you head on down to the link in the show notes, you can
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  Speaker: enroll before the doors closed.
• 1:45
  Speaker: Last time in twenty twenty six,
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  Speaker: it won't be open early in twenty
• 1:49
  Speaker: twenty seven.
• 1:50
  Speaker: I don't know exactly when the doors will open again, but if
• 1:53
  Speaker: you want to get started on pitching a cookbook in twenty
• 1:57
  Speaker: twenty seven, now is your time to join again.
• 2:02
  Speaker: The link is in the show notes.
• 2:04
  Speaker: So my guest today is Stef Pixley of America's Test Kitchen, where
• 2:08
  Speaker: the motto behind every recipe is simple we make the mistakes so
• 2:13
  Speaker: you don't have to.
• 2:15
  Speaker: Today we talk all about their
• 2:17
  Speaker: beautiful new book, The New
• 2:18
  Speaker: Cookie Creative takes on classic
• 2:21
  Speaker: Sue love, where we share all
• 2:25
  Speaker: about how eight test kitchens
• 2:27
  Speaker: push every cookie recipe to its
• 2:29
  Speaker: breaking point.
• 2:31
  Speaker: We talk about ice cream shop flavors behind many of the
• 2:33
  Speaker: recipes, a pantry ingredient that adds bold color and flavor
• 2:38
  Speaker: to a cookie.
• 2:40
  Speaker: Why salted melted chocolate chunk cookies took more than
• 2:44
  Speaker: sixty test, and the chocolate surprise, the chocolate choice.
• 2:49
  Speaker: That actually did surprise me when Stef revealed what it was.
• 2:53
  Speaker: How long to rest cookie dough to
• 2:55
  Speaker: the point where rest time starts
• 2:57
  Speaker: to hurt the texture of the
• 2:58
  Speaker: dough.
• 2:58
  Speaker: You know how so many cookie recipes tell us to chill the
• 3:01
  Speaker: dough before we bake it?
• 3:03
  Speaker: Which I secretly told Steph gives me hives because usually
• 3:07
  Speaker: when I want to have a cookie, I'm not as patient about letting
• 3:11
  Speaker: it rest before I bake them.
• 3:13
  Speaker: And Steph also shares secrets
• 3:16
  Speaker: for holiday cookie boxes that
• 3:17
  Speaker: stay fresh, plus cookies that
• 3:19
  Speaker: need to be put in their own
• 3:21
  Speaker: container and not put in the
• 3:23
  Speaker: box.
• 3:24
  Speaker: So this is a great episode for this time of year.
• 3:28
  Speaker: Baking books were a top selling cookbook segment in twenty
• 3:31
  Speaker: twenty five, and Steph's book from America's Test Kitchen is
• 3:35
  Speaker: going to show you why.
• 3:37
  Speaker: And so I do hope that you enjoy this episode and Steph's
• 3:42
  Speaker: presence here for the second time on Cookbook Love Podcast.
• 3:46
  Speaker: And without further delay, let's
• 3:47
  Speaker: dive into this interview with
• 3:49
  Speaker: Steph Pixley of America's Test
• 3:52
  Speaker: Kitchen.
• 3:54
  Speaker: Hi, Steph.
• 3:54
  Speaker: Welcome to the cookbook Love podcast.
• 3:57
  Speaker: Thanks for having me.
• 3:58
  Speaker: Good to be here.
• 3:59
  Speaker: Yeah, it's great to have you back.
• 4:00
  Speaker: You are on episode three forty five.
• 4:04
  Speaker: We talked all about America's
• 4:06
  Speaker: test kitchens book baking for
• 4:08
  Speaker: two.
• 4:08
  Speaker: But today we have a whole new
• 4:10
  Speaker: story to tell your beautiful new
• 4:12
  Speaker: book.
• 4:12
  Speaker: But before we dive into talking about the new cookie, why don't
• 4:15
  Speaker: you tell everybody a little bit about yourself and who you are
• 4:18
  Speaker: and what you do?
• 4:19
  Speaker: Sure.
• 4:20
  Speaker: Um, my name is Steph Pixley.
• 4:22
  Speaker: I'm the executive food editor at America's Test Kitchen, which
• 4:25
  Speaker: means that I get to work with a group of test cooks every day
• 4:29
  Speaker: developing recipes for cookbooks, for our website, for
• 4:33
  Speaker: the America's Test Kitchen app, uh, for TV shows.
• 4:37
  Speaker: Anything you can dream up.
• 4:38
  Speaker: Um, I spend my days eating
• 4:41
  Speaker: mostly, which is harder than it
• 4:44
  Speaker: sounds.
• 4:46
  Speaker: Um, but my favorite thing is tasting food with all of my
• 4:50
  Speaker: colleagues, troubleshooting and brainstorming creative solutions
• 4:54
  Speaker: to everyday problems that people face in the kitchen.
• 4:56
  Speaker: Yeah, and this book, The New
• 4:58
  Speaker: Cookie, is certainly no
• 4:59
  Speaker: exception.
• 5:00
  Speaker: Creative takes on classics you love.
• 5:02
  Speaker: I mean, who doesn't love cookies?
• 5:04
  Speaker: I haven't met that person yet.
• 5:07
  Speaker: I haven't either, and I always
• 5:10
  Speaker: joke with people that come on
• 5:11
  Speaker: the show with my students, like,
• 5:14
  Speaker: cookie books are always like an
• 5:17
  Speaker: evergreen topic.
• 5:18
  Speaker: Yes they are.
• 5:19
  Speaker: I mean, they fit into your life in so many different ways.
• 5:23
  Speaker: There are so many different
• 5:24
  Speaker: styles they're endlessly
• 5:25
  Speaker: adaptable to.
• 5:27
  Speaker: I think everybody loves a cookie.
• 5:29
  Speaker: It's just a little sweet treat
• 5:30
  Speaker: that picks you up on like at
• 5:33
  Speaker: that two o'clock slump hundred
• 5:35
  Speaker: percent.
• 5:35
  Speaker: And they're many of the recipes in this book.
• 5:38
  Speaker: I mean, beautiful, and I'm not
• 5:40
  Speaker: talking about like the type that
• 5:41
  Speaker: take a ton of time to like
• 5:43
  Speaker: decorate.
• 5:45
  Speaker: Um, I'm just talking about the
• 5:46
  Speaker: way that maybe they're shaped
• 5:48
  Speaker: the color combinations you used
• 5:51
  Speaker: piped cookies, it's just a
• 5:53
  Speaker: beautiful presentation of
• 5:55
  Speaker: cookies.
• 5:55
  Speaker: And I think that makes them fun too, because they're such bite
• 5:58
  Speaker: sized little gems of goodness.
• 6:01
  Speaker: And of course, we're getting
• 6:02
  Speaker: into the time of year where a
• 6:03
  Speaker: lot of people start to think
• 6:05
  Speaker: about cookies, more baking
• 6:07
  Speaker: cookies.
• 6:08
  Speaker: Um, there's probably people that
• 6:10
  Speaker: are so obsessed with Christmas
• 6:12
  Speaker: cookie baking that they're
• 6:13
  Speaker: starting now.
• 6:14
  Speaker: Many can be frozen successfully if they make cookie boxes.
• 6:18
  Speaker: So we're going to talk all about that.
• 6:20
  Speaker: But what made cookies feel like
• 6:23
  Speaker: something that America's Test
• 6:24
  Speaker: Kitchen wanted to take on right
• 6:26
  Speaker: now?
• 6:28
  Speaker: So good question.
• 6:29
  Speaker: We have a cookie book that we
• 6:32
  Speaker: published about ten years ago,
• 6:33
  Speaker: actually called The Perfect
• 6:35
  Speaker: Cookie.
• 6:36
  Speaker: And that's a great cookbook.
• 6:39
  Speaker: It stands the test of time, uh, when you're looking for classics
• 6:43
  Speaker: and perfect cookies.
• 6:45
  Speaker: But I think the way that I think
• 6:46
  Speaker: about cookies now is thinking
• 6:48
  Speaker: about them as expressions of
• 6:51
  Speaker: your creativity.
• 6:52
  Speaker: It's not about perfection.
• 6:53
  Speaker: It's about flavor and texture more than anything.
• 6:57
  Speaker: Um, I think at ATK we are big
• 7:00
  Speaker: fans of ice cream shops, and
• 7:03
  Speaker: we're constantly surprised and
• 7:05
  Speaker: inspired by local ice cream
• 7:08
  Speaker: shops and their creative takes
• 7:09
  Speaker: on flavor.
• 7:10
  Speaker: We were really inspired by very specific flavors of ice creams
• 7:15
  Speaker: and wanted to turn them into cookies in this book.
• 7:17
  Speaker: It felt like so adaptable in the same kind of way you were saying
• 7:21
  Speaker: they're little bites.
• 7:22
  Speaker: Gems like that's what ice cream is too.
• 7:24
  Speaker: So it was a really good like
• 7:25
  Speaker: transformation of something we
• 7:27
  Speaker: love into a new realm of
• 7:29
  Speaker: cookies.
• 7:31
  Speaker: And ice cream is another.
• 7:32
  Speaker: It's a great example of the similar type of thing, because
• 7:34
  Speaker: even just a scoop of a really good ice cream could just have
• 7:37
  Speaker: it could have add ins, it could have texture, totally color, it
• 7:42
  Speaker: could have flavor.
• 7:44
  Speaker: Um, and it's just really like
• 7:46
  Speaker: sometimes like the basis of it
• 7:48
  Speaker: is similar, but you get so many
• 7:51
  Speaker: different results on the other
• 7:52
  Speaker: end.
• 7:53
  Speaker: Now, what did social media or just bakery culture have to do
• 7:57
  Speaker: with the shaping of this book?
• 8:01
  Speaker: So that's definitely something that we kept in mind.
• 8:03
  Speaker: I think these days, sometimes the camera eats first, meaning,
• 8:08
  Speaker: you know, if you're going to bake something, a lot of people
• 8:11
  Speaker: take a picture and post it on Instagram and want to be
• 8:13
  Speaker: replicating something they saw at a bakery.
• 8:16
  Speaker: Or maybe you don't live in a town where there is a bakery,
• 8:19
  Speaker: but you saw something on Instagram that really inspired
• 8:22
  Speaker: you and you wanted to have that.
• 8:23
  Speaker: But obviously you can't travel
• 8:25
  Speaker: to New York City or wherever it
• 8:27
  Speaker: is.
• 8:27
  Speaker: So we were very much inspired by the way a cookie looks on in a
• 8:33
  Speaker: bakery on Instagram and turning those cookies into something
• 8:37
  Speaker: that was manageable for a home cook to to do in their home.
• 8:40
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 8:41
  Speaker: And the good news about all this
• 8:43
  Speaker: for you guys is in twenty twenty
• 8:44
  Speaker: five, baking books were the top
• 8:47
  Speaker: selling segment of cookery
• 8:49
  Speaker: books, and I think that you hit
• 8:51
  Speaker: on.
• 8:52
  Speaker: The reason why I believe that was true is because not
• 8:55
  Speaker: everybody has the type of bakery nearby or within walking
• 8:58
  Speaker: distance or around their town that they could go and buy
• 9:02
  Speaker: something like they see maybe on Instagram, but a book like this
• 9:06
  Speaker: is going to allow someone to do this in their own home.
• 9:10
  Speaker: Totally.
• 9:11
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 9:11
  Speaker: And cookies are a great entry
• 9:12
  Speaker: point for bakers to write their
• 9:15
  Speaker: lower expectations.
• 9:16
  Speaker: Maybe everybody knows what a
• 9:18
  Speaker: cookie should look like, taste
• 9:20
  Speaker: like.
• 9:21
  Speaker: So it feels a little bit easier
• 9:22
  Speaker: to try out and dip your feet
• 9:24
  Speaker: into.
• 9:25
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 9:25
  Speaker: So for those of my listeners that aren't familiar with Atc's
• 9:30
  Speaker: process, like what's behind a recipe and a book project at
• 9:36
  Speaker: ATK, why don't you walk us through that a little bit?
• 9:38
  Speaker: Yeah, sure.
• 9:39
  Speaker: So America's Test Kitchen, our tagline, I guess, is we make the
• 9:43
  Speaker: mistakes so you don't have to.
• 9:45
  Speaker: We make.
• 9:46
  Speaker: Our job is to make lots and lots and lots of mistakes every day
• 9:49
  Speaker: in the kitchen.
• 9:49
  Speaker: So we have a team of test cooks.
• 9:52
  Speaker: Um, there were a team of, I want to say eight cooks that worked
• 9:55
  Speaker: on this book.
• 9:56
  Speaker: And every single day they went into the kitchen to test these
• 9:59
  Speaker: recipes over and over and over again until they failed.
• 10:03
  Speaker: The goal is to figure out what
• 10:04
  Speaker: the breaking points of these
• 10:05
  Speaker: recipes are, so that we can
• 10:07
  Speaker: create a recipe for a home cook
• 10:09
  Speaker: to follow that we know will
• 10:11
  Speaker: work.
• 10:11
  Speaker: The way we start is usually with a five recipe test.
• 10:14
  Speaker: So we'll say, okay, we want to
• 10:16
  Speaker: develop a new brownie recipe or
• 10:18
  Speaker: a new chocolate chip cookie
• 10:20
  Speaker: recipe.
• 10:21
  Speaker: Let's take a look at five examples of a chocolate chip
• 10:24
  Speaker: cookie recipe that represents different styles of cookies.
• 10:28
  Speaker: Represents different ingredients.
• 10:30
  Speaker: Uh, one that's maybe a classic one that's a very new spin.
• 10:34
  Speaker: Let's make these recipes all come together as a group.
• 10:37
  Speaker: Taste them.
• 10:38
  Speaker: Give feedback about what we liked, what we didn't like, and
• 10:41
  Speaker: then start from there with an an initial working recipe.
• 10:46
  Speaker: Putting together our favorite
• 10:47
  Speaker: parts of all of those recipes to
• 10:49
  Speaker: create our ultimate version of
• 10:51
  Speaker: whatever cookie it is that we're
• 10:52
  Speaker: creating.
• 10:53
  Speaker: And did you really drive the recipes to a point where they
• 10:55
  Speaker: did like they take it so far so that it would fail?
• 10:59
  Speaker: Yes.
• 10:59
  Speaker: And I mean, failure by way of a
• 11:02
  Speaker: cookie is still pretty
• 11:03
  Speaker: delicious.
• 11:04
  Speaker: No. Not terrible.
• 11:05
  Speaker: I yeah, I'm not pulling any punches there.
• 11:08
  Speaker: It was not a hard task
• 11:09
  Speaker: necessarily to eat all of those
• 11:11
  Speaker: cookies.
• 11:12
  Speaker: But yeah, we wanted to see,
• 11:13
  Speaker: okay, what happens if we use a
• 11:15
  Speaker: huge chunks of chocolate in this
• 11:17
  Speaker: cookie instead of little mini
• 11:19
  Speaker: chips?
• 11:19
  Speaker: What happens if you use bread flour instead of cake flour?
• 11:24
  Speaker: Or what if you use oil instead of melted butter?
• 11:27
  Speaker: You know, to see what is the what are the ingredient swaps
• 11:32
  Speaker: that do work don't work?
• 11:34
  Speaker: And also methods like why are we using a stand mixer here?
• 11:37
  Speaker: Could you do it by hand?
• 11:39
  Speaker: Um, what about ingredient sourcing?
• 11:41
  Speaker: Like this ingredient is hard to find.
• 11:43
  Speaker: What happens if you use a store bought version?
• 11:46
  Speaker: That's not the same thing.
• 11:47
  Speaker: But is it okay?
• 11:48
  Speaker: You know, we really try to dig into all of those little details
• 11:51
  Speaker: so that it's not just pretty on a page or pretty on your phone.
• 11:55
  Speaker: Like you can make that at home,
• 11:57
  Speaker: the ingredients you have on
• 11:58
  Speaker: hand.
• 11:58
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 11:59
  Speaker: And what about relevancy now in
• 12:01
  Speaker: twenty twenty six for bakers,
• 12:04
  Speaker: new bakers, people who are
• 12:05
  Speaker: learning this craft for the
• 12:06
  Speaker: first time?
• 12:08
  Speaker: What types of things are you offering in this book to help
• 12:11
  Speaker: stay relevant in that area?
• 12:13
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 12:13
  Speaker: I mean, we, we really explored lots of trends.
• 12:17
  Speaker: Obviously, we, we wanted to think about classic recipes.
• 12:20
  Speaker: That's it's important, in my opinion, to start with classics.
• 12:23
  Speaker: Quote unquote classics, whatever
• 12:25
  Speaker: that means to you to, to, to get
• 12:28
  Speaker: a, a familiarity with basics and
• 12:32
  Speaker: an understanding of how cookies
• 12:34
  Speaker: might work across different
• 12:35
  Speaker: styles.
• 12:36
  Speaker: But from there, we took a deep
• 12:38
  Speaker: dive look into what ingredients,
• 12:40
  Speaker: what techniques, what styles of
• 12:42
  Speaker: cookies are exciting and what is
• 12:45
  Speaker: available to us now that maybe
• 12:47
  Speaker: wasn't available to us ten years
• 12:48
  Speaker: ago.
• 12:49
  Speaker: So freeze dried fruit, for example, was something that we
• 12:52
  Speaker: were really excited about when we were working on this book,
• 12:54
  Speaker: which probably was available ten years ago, but like not quite as
• 12:58
  Speaker: readily available or there weren't quite as many different
• 13:01
  Speaker: types of freeze dried fruit.
• 13:03
  Speaker: Um, but we loved using freeze dried fruit in this cookbook in
• 13:06
  Speaker: a few different ways.
• 13:08
  Speaker: Freeze dried fruit is fruit that has been dried.
• 13:10
  Speaker: So it is like the, the, if you
• 13:13
  Speaker: eat it, it's the essence of the
• 13:14
  Speaker: fruit.
• 13:15
  Speaker: It's crunchy, crispy.
• 13:16
  Speaker: You can actually grind up that freeze dried fruit in a spice
• 13:20
  Speaker: grinder to a powder, and then use that in as an ingredient in
• 13:25
  Speaker: flavoring your cookies so you could stir it into your batter.
• 13:28
  Speaker: Often we used it in a glaze, um,
• 13:30
  Speaker: or even just sprinkle it on the
• 13:32
  Speaker: top of your cookies for a pretty
• 13:33
  Speaker: finish too.
• 13:35
  Speaker: Um, and you can find freeze
• 13:37
  Speaker: dried fruit and all kinds of
• 13:38
  Speaker: different flavors.
• 13:39
  Speaker: So there's raspberry, mango, cherries, blueberries, I mean,
• 13:43
  Speaker: anything under the sun.
• 13:44
  Speaker: Go to Trader Joe's and look in the freeze dried fruit section
• 13:47
  Speaker: and start playing around.
• 13:48
  Speaker: It's really fun.
• 13:50
  Speaker: Yeah, there's a great illustration here, and it's
• 13:52
  Speaker: actually a photo in the book about, um, different colors.
• 13:56
  Speaker: The, the way you are able to
• 13:58
  Speaker: color the dough just of a simple
• 14:00
  Speaker: thumbprint cookie.
• 14:01
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 14:02
  Speaker: And, uh, for example, you might have used, uh, um, you actually
• 14:07
  Speaker: used it also like a sugar or you somehow colored the sugar or the
• 14:10
  Speaker: topping and made it like a powder too, didn't you to like
• 14:13
  Speaker: roll a cookie?
• 14:14
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 14:14
  Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
• 14:15
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 14:15
  Speaker: Flavor it.
• 14:16
  Speaker: And then you could actually
• 14:17
  Speaker: combine it with a different
• 14:18
  Speaker: flavor, like jelly that's inside
• 14:20
  Speaker: the thumbprint.
• 14:21
  Speaker: So I loved looking at the, um,
• 14:23
  Speaker: those different colors and you
• 14:25
  Speaker: call it tasting the rainbow, but
• 14:27
  Speaker: some really interesting flavor
• 14:29
  Speaker: combinations like this carrot
• 14:30
  Speaker: sugar, it's put on the cookie,
• 14:35
  Speaker: right?
• 14:35
  Speaker: Carrot.
• 14:36
  Speaker: Yeah, right.
• 14:37
  Speaker: But that one was kind of wild.
• 14:38
  Speaker: Carrot.
• 14:39
  Speaker: Is it from freeze dried carrots?
• 14:40
  Speaker: Yes.
• 14:41
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 14:41
  Speaker: It is.
• 14:42
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 14:42
  Speaker: That one's, uh.
• 14:43
  Speaker: There are.
• 14:44
  Speaker: I mean, generally we stuck with fruit for the most part.
• 14:46
  Speaker: That was probably the most broadly.
• 14:48
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 14:48
  Speaker: But we have carrot cake, right?
• 14:50
  Speaker: Yes.
• 14:51
  Speaker: Totally.
• 14:51
  Speaker: Yes.
• 14:52
  Speaker: Or the corn.
• 14:53
  Speaker: Corn sugar.
• 14:53
  Speaker: Corn one with a blueberry.
• 14:55
  Speaker: Yes.
• 14:55
  Speaker: Like classic combination.
• 14:57
  Speaker: Yes.
• 14:57
  Speaker: So pretty.
• 14:58
  Speaker: And corn.
• 14:59
  Speaker: I think when I think about baking, I think cornmeal and I,
• 15:02
  Speaker: I don't necessarily think kernels of corn, but cornmeal
• 15:04
  Speaker: and semolina definitely are things that go into cookies.
• 15:08
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 15:08
  Speaker: So the corn sugar wasn't as big of a. But the carrot was neat
• 15:12
  Speaker: though, again, because it still did harken to something that we
• 15:14
  Speaker: eat in sweet form cakes.
• 15:17
  Speaker: Yeah, probably some sort of carrot cake.
• 15:19
  Speaker: Ice cream out there, like you mentioned.
• 15:21
  Speaker: Yes.
• 15:21
  Speaker: Of course.
• 15:22
  Speaker: Then classic things like strawberry, raspberry, peach.
• 15:25
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 15:25
  Speaker: The peach is beautiful.
• 15:26
  Speaker: It's so pale.
• 15:27
  Speaker: Um, like a pale peach color.
• 15:30
  Speaker: Lovely.
• 15:31
  Speaker: And then the blueberry.
• 15:32
  Speaker: Of course.
• 15:32
  Speaker: Blueberry.
• 15:33
  Speaker: Um, funny.
• 15:34
  Speaker: There's a lot of blue design in
• 15:35
  Speaker: this book, but food isn't really
• 15:37
  Speaker: blue.
• 15:37
  Speaker: Correct?
• 15:38
  Speaker: It's like blueberries, like this.
• 15:39
  Speaker: Intense, almost like a. Yeah.
• 15:41
  Speaker: Purple.
• 15:42
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 15:42
  Speaker: Right.
• 15:43
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 15:43
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 15:44
  Speaker: Stains your tongue blue.
• 15:44
  Speaker: But yeah, that's right.
• 15:46
  Speaker: So let's talk about some of the other flavors.
• 15:47
  Speaker: Um, some of you have a list of today's flavors.
• 15:50
  Speaker: You talk about caramel, spices, nuts, malt, citrus herbs, and
• 15:55
  Speaker: floral flavors that you really try to pick up inspiration in
• 16:00
  Speaker: all of those different areas.
• 16:02
  Speaker: Yeah, totally.
• 16:03
  Speaker: I think that, um, sometimes it's easy to forget about kind of
• 16:07
  Speaker: more basic flavorings too.
• 16:09
  Speaker: It's really exciting to think about, okay, uh, how many things
• 16:13
  Speaker: can I put matcha in?
• 16:14
  Speaker: Or, uh, how many things can I put?
• 16:17
  Speaker: Um, oh, I don't know, miso in or halva or those are great
• 16:24
  Speaker: ingredients to use.
• 16:25
  Speaker: I highly recommend stocking your pantry with everything you
• 16:28
  Speaker: possibly can, but I think taking a step back to and thinking
• 16:31
  Speaker: about like basic herbs, uh, citrus, um, floral flavors too.
• 16:38
  Speaker: Like that's very retro, but I think for a cookie can really
• 16:42
  Speaker: work in a small bite.
• 16:44
  Speaker: Um, we did a gingerbread cookie,
• 16:47
  Speaker: a triple citrus gingerbread
• 16:50
  Speaker: cookie, which gingerbread
• 16:52
  Speaker: cookies are great on their own,
• 16:53
  Speaker: right?
• 16:53
  Speaker: They have their molasses, they
• 16:55
  Speaker: have subtle ginger notes to
• 16:57
  Speaker: them, and they're kind of like
• 16:59
  Speaker: classic decorations.
• 17:02
  Speaker: They're expected.
• 17:04
  Speaker: So for this book, we kind of wanted to push the boundaries a
• 17:07
  Speaker: little bit in terms of what we could do there.
• 17:10
  Speaker: We also didn't want to make it overly complicated, like, I love
• 17:13
  Speaker: to bake, but I am not the most skilled artiste when it comes to
• 17:20
  Speaker: decorating, especially when it comes to like fine piping work.
• 17:25
  Speaker: That's not.
• 17:25
  Speaker: I pay the professionals to do that, right?
• 17:28
  Speaker: And I respect them.
• 17:30
  Speaker: I'm humbled, but I think that you can still do something
• 17:33
  Speaker: really interesting without having a lot of skill.
• 17:36
  Speaker: And I think that's where we can come in as a tech to figure that
• 17:40
  Speaker: out, because we are home cooks.
• 17:41
  Speaker: I was trained, I went to culinary school, but I also
• 17:44
  Speaker: still have my my home cook hat on at all times.
• 17:47
  Speaker: So this triple citrus gingerbread cookie, we really
• 17:51
  Speaker: loved the idea of adding citrus zest to this cookie too.
• 17:54
  Speaker: And not just lemon or lime or orange.
• 17:56
  Speaker: We put all three citrus scents
• 17:58
  Speaker: in there and paired with a
• 18:00
  Speaker: ginger.
• 18:00
  Speaker: It works so well.
• 18:02
  Speaker: Those flavors all are very harmonious actually.
• 18:06
  Speaker: Yeah, and are not overpowered by the molasses.
• 18:09
  Speaker: It was really, really nice, but it wasn't hitting you over the
• 18:12
  Speaker: head like, this is a cayenne pepper cookie, you know, like
• 18:15
  Speaker: everybody will enjoy it still.
• 18:17
  Speaker: And then for the decorations, instead of piping work, we
• 18:21
  Speaker: actually did a really simple dip to our cookie.
• 18:24
  Speaker: So we did, um, coconut oil,
• 18:27
  Speaker: refined coconut oil, which, um,
• 18:30
  Speaker: if you've ever made Magic Shell
• 18:32
  Speaker: at home, coconut oil is usually
• 18:34
  Speaker: the key to creating the great
• 18:36
  Speaker: magic shell.
• 18:37
  Speaker: Because it's fluid when it's warm.
• 18:39
  Speaker: But then when it sets, it gets hard.
• 18:41
  Speaker: And the same thing is true for a glaze for a cookie.
• 18:43
  Speaker: So we did milk white chocolate chips and refined coconut oil
• 18:50
  Speaker: and split it into two bowls.
• 18:52
  Speaker: Put a little bit of food coloring in one of them, and
• 18:54
  Speaker: then we have these round cookies that we dipped into one of the
• 18:57
  Speaker: colors, let it sit until it was dry, and then rotated it and
• 19:01
  Speaker: ninety degrees and then dipped it in the other color.
• 19:04
  Speaker: So it was this kind of like
• 19:05
  Speaker: crosshatch, like flannel, very
• 19:07
  Speaker: cozy looking.
• 19:09
  Speaker: You could pick whatever color
• 19:10
  Speaker: you want to represent, whatever
• 19:11
  Speaker: holiday.
• 19:12
  Speaker: It was really, really satisfying.
• 19:14
  Speaker: And the white chocolate flavor was a really good pairing to the
• 19:18
  Speaker: citrus gingerbread to it all.
• 19:19
  Speaker: Just like really worked in a nice, simple kind of a way.
• 19:22
  Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
• 19:23
  Speaker: And it's not a complicated shape.
• 19:24
  Speaker: It looks like it's, it's a round cookie.
• 19:26
  Speaker: So it's not not hard to cut, not
• 19:29
  Speaker: hard to decorate, but it's
• 19:31
  Speaker: gorgeous.
• 19:31
  Speaker: It's one of the cookies that's on the plate on the front.
• 19:33
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 19:34
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 19:34
  Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
• 19:35
  Speaker: Very beautiful.
• 19:35
  Speaker: Well, then on the flip side of
• 19:36
  Speaker: that, like in under the spice
• 19:37
  Speaker: category, you have a garam
• 19:39
  Speaker: masala molasses cookie, which
• 19:41
  Speaker: I'm sure is similar, but it's
• 19:43
  Speaker: not, it's, it's a different type
• 19:44
  Speaker: of cookie.
• 19:44
  Speaker: So tell us about that one.
• 19:46
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 19:47
  Speaker: So molasses cookie is a really classic chewy, like rich,
• 19:51
  Speaker: indulgent kind of a cookie.
• 19:52
  Speaker: It's kind of like a sugar cookie just using molasses.
• 19:55
  Speaker: So it tends to have a bit more of a fudgy ness to it.
• 19:58
  Speaker: And molasses flavors are really like high aromatic flavors, like
• 20:04
  Speaker: on your palate.
• 20:05
  Speaker: And when thinking about how we could spin molasses cookies,
• 20:10
  Speaker: molasses is such a strong flavor, it is really hard to to
• 20:14
  Speaker: augment or enhance, and it can be really easy to like compete.
• 20:20
  Speaker: So we really stuck with flavors that had those sort of same high
• 20:24
  Speaker: palate kind of notes to it.
• 20:26
  Speaker: And garam masala is a spice
• 20:28
  Speaker: blend that works so, so, so well
• 20:30
  Speaker: with molasses.
• 20:32
  Speaker: It, um, we use just a small amount in the cookie.
• 20:37
  Speaker: And we also use some of the
• 20:39
  Speaker: seeds to coat the exterior of
• 20:41
  Speaker: the cookie.
• 20:42
  Speaker: So garam masala is a really nice blend of spices.
• 20:46
  Speaker: It kind of varies based on where
• 20:48
  Speaker: you get it, but often it's like
• 20:49
  Speaker: cumin, coriander, cardamom,
• 20:52
  Speaker: cinnamon, cloves, black pepper,
• 20:54
  Speaker: maybe nutmeg.
• 20:55
  Speaker: It's it's very warm, spicy, and
• 20:58
  Speaker: often it's used in savory
• 21:00
  Speaker: cooking.
• 21:01
  Speaker: Um, but we really loved the like cardamom cinnamon background
• 21:05
  Speaker: with a little bit of like warring savory flavor in there.
• 21:09
  Speaker: It worked really well with the molasses.
• 21:11
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 21:11
  Speaker: And it looks like those look like they're, they're coriander
• 21:14
  Speaker: seeds in on the top.
• 21:15
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 21:16
  Speaker: Beautiful.
• 21:17
  Speaker: Um, yeah.
• 21:17
  Speaker: So, you know, those are a similar type of cookie, you
• 21:20
  Speaker: know, gingerbread spice and then the molasses spice, but then how
• 21:24
  Speaker: you were able to take the flavor profile and make it different.
• 21:28
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 21:28
  Speaker: Something in the flavor column that is discussed online ad
• 21:33
  Speaker: nauseam is aging cookie dough.
• 21:37
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 21:38
  Speaker: Talk a little bit about age.
• 21:40
  Speaker: I'm never patient enough to age my cookies.
• 21:43
  Speaker: If I decide, like we were
• 21:45
  Speaker: watching some, uh, professional
• 21:47
  Speaker: football a couple Sundays ago
• 21:48
  Speaker: and I thought, I'm going to make
• 21:49
  Speaker: some cookies.
• 21:50
  Speaker: And, um, I made some chocolate chip cookies and I thought, you
• 21:53
  Speaker: know, I really probably should be aging this dough, but I can't
• 21:57
  Speaker: in the moment.
• 21:58
  Speaker: It's just not, it doesn't work for me.
• 22:00
  Speaker: But anyway, tell it, tell everybody what that means.
• 22:04
  Speaker: I know age and cookie dough.
• 22:05
  Speaker: That's such a funny.
• 22:06
  Speaker: Like what?
• 22:06
  Speaker: How do you like, put it in a time machine or something?
• 22:09
  Speaker: What do you do to it?
• 22:10
  Speaker: Right.
• 22:10
  Speaker: So. And why?
• 22:12
  Speaker: Maybe, like, make the case for why we might want to age it.
• 22:15
  Speaker: Okay.
• 22:16
  Speaker: All right.
• 22:16
  Speaker: So. Well you might.
• 22:18
  Speaker: So aging cookie dough
• 22:19
  Speaker: essentially means you're going
• 22:20
  Speaker: to make your cookie dough as you
• 22:21
  Speaker: normally would.
• 22:22
  Speaker: And then instead of baking your cookies right away, what you do
• 22:24
  Speaker: is you put it in the refrigerator for any extent, for
• 22:27
  Speaker: any amount of time.
• 22:28
  Speaker: That could be thirty minutes.
• 22:30
  Speaker: It could be seventy two hours.
• 22:32
  Speaker: So up to three days.
• 22:33
  Speaker: I think we found beyond three days, there's really not any
• 22:36
  Speaker: reason to do it.
• 22:37
  Speaker: It just gets drier and the
• 22:39
  Speaker: texture changes in a way that
• 22:41
  Speaker: isn't nice.
• 22:41
  Speaker: So in cookie dough, the idea is that as the dough sits, there's
• 22:49
  Speaker: complex chemical reactions that are happening within the dough.
• 22:53
  Speaker: And what is happening is that
• 22:56
  Speaker: flavor compounds are continuing
• 22:58
  Speaker: to form.
• 22:59
  Speaker: So you make your dough, but
• 23:01
  Speaker: melted butter, sugar, brown
• 23:03
  Speaker: sugar, eggs, flour, chocolate,
• 23:06
  Speaker: whatever it is in there, it's a
• 23:08
  Speaker: chocolate chip cookie dough
• 23:09
  Speaker: recipe.
• 23:10
  Speaker: Um, you combine all your ingredients and you get those
• 23:13
  Speaker: flavors right away.
• 23:14
  Speaker: But if you put them in the refrigerator, the butter, the
• 23:17
  Speaker: water from the eggs, the sugar, They're all melding further.
• 23:21
  Speaker: So the sugar is dissolving further.
• 23:23
  Speaker: The flour is hydrating, the starches are gelatinizing.
• 23:28
  Speaker: And what's happening is you're getting more of those flavor
• 23:31
  Speaker: compounds that are developing so that when you go to pull those
• 23:34
  Speaker: that cookie dough from the fridge twenty four hours, forty
• 23:37
  Speaker: eight hours, seventy two hours later, the flavor should be
• 23:40
  Speaker: markedly different between them.
• 23:42
  Speaker: I will say there's a big difference between a zero and
• 23:48
  Speaker: seventy two hours, and there's a big difference between zero and
• 23:52
  Speaker: thirty minutes, but the difference between twenty four
• 23:55
  Speaker: and seventy two is actually not as big as you would think.
• 23:58
  Speaker: So the big takeaway is if you're
• 24:01
  Speaker: going to aid your cookie dough,
• 24:02
  Speaker: do it.
• 24:03
  Speaker: It adds a lot of flavor, but you
• 24:05
  Speaker: don't even need to do it that
• 24:06
  Speaker: long.
• 24:06
  Speaker: Just doing it for thirty minutes even can really develop more of
• 24:09
  Speaker: those flavor compounds.
• 24:11
  Speaker: Sometimes.
• 24:12
  Speaker: I will say, though, aging cookie
• 24:14
  Speaker: dough is also about shape
• 24:16
  Speaker: ability.
• 24:17
  Speaker: Like sometimes you're the recipe that you're working from.
• 24:21
  Speaker: We have a recipe, a chocolate crinkle cookie recipe that is a
• 24:25
  Speaker: very wet dough.
• 24:26
  Speaker: There's a lot of melted chocolate in there.
• 24:28
  Speaker: There's a lot of butter, and it
• 24:29
  Speaker: can be just kind of a mess to
• 24:31
  Speaker: work with.
• 24:32
  Speaker: And actually, we age that dough.
• 24:34
  Speaker: We refrigerate it for, I think
• 24:35
  Speaker: it's an hour or thirty minutes,
• 24:37
  Speaker: and that aging helps the
• 24:39
  Speaker: starches to absorb the moisture
• 24:41
  Speaker: and to help it make it less
• 24:43
  Speaker: messy.
• 24:44
  Speaker: It's a little bit more manageable.
• 24:45
  Speaker: And so yes, you're aging your cookie dough there, but it's not
• 24:48
  Speaker: for flavor so much as it is just to make it a little bit cleaner
• 24:51
  Speaker: and easier to work with.
• 24:52
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 24:52
  Speaker: And I can understand that because there is nothing more
• 24:54
  Speaker: frustrating than working on making a cookie and it's a drop
• 24:57
  Speaker: cookie, maybe, or you shape it out and then it spreads all
• 25:01
  Speaker: across the cookie sheet.
• 25:02
  Speaker: Yes.
• 25:02
  Speaker: And you don't have a nice you
• 25:04
  Speaker: have like cookies all stuck
• 25:05
  Speaker: together.
• 25:06
  Speaker: Yes, definitely.
• 25:07
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 25:08
  Speaker: So if your dough is very soft,
• 25:09
  Speaker: just pop it in the fridge for
• 25:10
  Speaker: thirty minutes.
• 25:11
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 25:11
  Speaker: I'm part of a Facebook group
• 25:13
  Speaker: that I kind of lurk in about,
• 25:14
  Speaker: um, the Pennsylvania tradition
• 25:17
  Speaker: of wedding cookie tables takes
• 25:20
  Speaker: place in, I think it's southwest
• 25:22
  Speaker: Pennsylvania, like Northeast
• 25:24
  Speaker: Ohio.
• 25:25
  Speaker: And they talk a lot about, um, how ingredients have.
• 25:29
  Speaker: Maybe they feel like they're, they be.
• 25:32
  Speaker: These women have been baking like for years.
• 25:34
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 25:34
  Speaker: Families have been baking.
• 25:35
  Speaker: Like, have ingredients changed?
• 25:38
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 25:38
  Speaker: Um, maybe the water content of
• 25:41
  Speaker: butter higher than it used to
• 25:42
  Speaker: be.
• 25:42
  Speaker: Now I thought there were
• 25:43
  Speaker: standards of identity, like set
• 25:45
  Speaker: that like, instead of if you
• 25:46
  Speaker: called something butter, it had
• 25:48
  Speaker: to meet a like quality type of,
• 25:51
  Speaker: uh.
• 25:51
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 25:52
  Speaker: But all purpose flour changing sugar.
• 25:55
  Speaker: Is it changing from, you know,
• 25:57
  Speaker: what, have you all noticed that
• 25:59
  Speaker: a t k along those lines,
• 26:00
  Speaker: anything that's of, uh, that's
• 26:02
  Speaker: worth mentioning?
• 26:03
  Speaker: Or is it really just
• 26:04
  Speaker: periodically or incidental, like
• 26:07
  Speaker: different brands?
• 26:09
  Speaker: I mean, I, I can't say anything with like confidence.
• 26:12
  Speaker: Anecdotally, I totally know what they're talking about.
• 26:15
  Speaker: I feel like, um, there was a
• 26:17
  Speaker: stint working on this book where
• 26:19
  Speaker: we noticed a really big
• 26:20
  Speaker: difference between, uh, brown
• 26:23
  Speaker: sugar, actually.
• 26:24
  Speaker: All of a sudden, cookies weren't spreading in the same way.
• 26:26
  Speaker: And we noticed it was something
• 26:28
  Speaker: about the brown sugar we were
• 26:30
  Speaker: using.
• 26:30
  Speaker: I've also had conversations
• 26:32
  Speaker: with, uh, Tesco here recently
• 26:34
  Speaker: who was talking about
• 26:35
  Speaker: potentially the size of eggs has
• 26:37
  Speaker: changed.
• 26:38
  Speaker: Actually, I think that eggs are
• 26:39
  Speaker: a really important ingredient in
• 26:41
  Speaker: baking.
• 26:42
  Speaker: And a large egg today might be I
• 26:45
  Speaker: mean, think about how big our
• 26:47
  Speaker: chickens are.
• 26:47
  Speaker: I know, so are they thinking it might be a little bit bigger?
• 26:51
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 26:51
  Speaker: Or the the white is different than the I'm not sure this is
• 26:55
  Speaker: all anecdotal, but, um, it can totally make a difference.
• 26:58
  Speaker: I think that this speaks to the importance of using a scale and
• 27:02
  Speaker: being an active cook.
• 27:04
  Speaker: So like we were saying, sometimes like your dough just
• 27:07
  Speaker: ends up stickier or wetter or looks different than what you
• 27:11
  Speaker: are used to making.
• 27:12
  Speaker: Like you make a cookie all the time, but for some reason today
• 27:16
  Speaker: it's just wet and you know, or think through like a wet dough
• 27:22
  Speaker: means it's going to spread more in the oven.
• 27:24
  Speaker: And so what can you do to prevent that?
• 27:25
  Speaker: Pop it in the fridge for thirty minutes before baking.
• 27:28
  Speaker: And it shouldn't spread quite so much.
• 27:30
  Speaker: Often temperature of ingredients plays a role too.
• 27:34
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 27:34
  Speaker: If your butter was a little extra warm, if it's a hot day,
• 27:37
  Speaker: that can affect spread too.
• 27:39
  Speaker: So yeah, unfortunately, I wish I knew more.
• 27:41
  Speaker: But it's also it's so opaque the the way that food gets
• 27:46
  Speaker: distributed and made.
• 27:47
  Speaker: I have no insight into that at all.
• 27:49
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 27:50
  Speaker: And I think also there's so many variables once you get to
• 27:53
  Speaker: somebody, like once you take this book into someone's home, I
• 27:55
  Speaker: mean, any number of things, right can happen.
• 27:57
  Speaker: You all just are able to account
• 27:59
  Speaker: for certain things that you all
• 28:01
  Speaker: have experienced in the test
• 28:02
  Speaker: kitchen.
• 28:03
  Speaker: Yeah, but the aging cookie dough has fascinating.
• 28:06
  Speaker: So now we know, um, thirty
• 28:08
  Speaker: minutes could be beneficial up
• 28:10
  Speaker: to twenty four hours, but
• 28:11
  Speaker: seventy beyond seventy two
• 28:12
  Speaker: hours.
• 28:13
  Speaker: Okay.
• 28:13
  Speaker: That's crazy.
• 28:14
  Speaker: Yeah, it is crazy.
• 28:16
  Speaker: But, you know, I think bakeries
• 28:18
  Speaker: that have like very popular big
• 28:19
  Speaker: cookies that they sell for, you
• 28:21
  Speaker: know?
• 28:21
  Speaker: Oh, yeah, several dollars a piece.
• 28:22
  Speaker: They're refrigerating their dough.
• 28:24
  Speaker: And you can tell by the, the way the cookie looks.
• 28:26
  Speaker: And you all tried to recreate
• 28:28
  Speaker: some of those bakery style, like
• 28:29
  Speaker: chunky.
• 28:30
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 28:31
  Speaker: Cookies.
• 28:31
  Speaker: Um, in a really good way.
• 28:33
  Speaker: So, um, I could definitely see
• 28:35
  Speaker: how the temperature of that
• 28:37
  Speaker: dough would make a difference so
• 28:38
  Speaker: that it stays standing up and
• 28:40
  Speaker: you know.
• 28:41
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 28:41
  Speaker: And I think you also said it changes the, the crunch on the
• 28:44
  Speaker: outside, the softness and chewiness in the middle.
• 28:46
  Speaker: So it's more than just the shape at that point.
• 28:49
  Speaker: It's also getting into texture, which is something else that we
• 28:52
  Speaker: actually talk about and control for in a lot of your testing.
• 28:56
  Speaker: Yeah, one cookie with many different textures.
• 28:58
  Speaker: Why don't you talk a little bit about that?
• 29:01
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 29:01
  Speaker: So I think that one of the things that I think about when I
• 29:06
  Speaker: am trying to figure out what dessert I want is.
• 29:11
  Speaker: What kind of texture am I looking for?
• 29:13
  Speaker: AM I. Especially when it comes to a cookie.
• 29:15
  Speaker: Do I want, like, a soft, tender, cakey cookie today?
• 29:19
  Speaker: Or am I in like, a chocolate,
• 29:21
  Speaker: chewy, gooey, kind of a kind of
• 29:23
  Speaker: a mood?
• 29:24
  Speaker: Or maybe I need something light and crunchy or crisp and
• 29:29
  Speaker: feathery and, you know, like, that's sort of the way that I
• 29:32
  Speaker: approach it sometimes.
• 29:33
  Speaker: And that's the way we actually organize the book.
• 29:36
  Speaker: So each chapter is organized by texture.
• 29:40
  Speaker: So you can go into this book and
• 29:42
  Speaker: say, okay, today I want a
• 29:43
  Speaker: cookie.
• 29:43
  Speaker: Cookie, show me all your cakey cookies.
• 29:46
  Speaker: Um, I think that the way that you, it's, it was really
• 29:50
  Speaker: interesting to organize the book that way because you got to see
• 29:53
  Speaker: a lot of, um, trends in cookie making that otherwise you might
• 29:58
  Speaker: not have seen.
• 29:59
  Speaker: So, um, buttery cookies that
• 30:02
  Speaker: are, uh, tender tend to use, uh,
• 30:05
  Speaker: softened butter or chilled
• 30:06
  Speaker: butter, right?
• 30:07
  Speaker: Like their slice and bake style
• 30:09
  Speaker: cookies, chewy, gooey cookies
• 30:11
  Speaker: are usually drop and drop
• 30:13
  Speaker: cookies.
• 30:13
  Speaker: Um, they use melted butter.
• 30:15
  Speaker: They generally don't need the stand mixer.
• 30:18
  Speaker: Cakey cookies tend to have a
• 30:20
  Speaker: liquid component to them that
• 30:22
  Speaker: makes the the cookie bigger and
• 30:24
  Speaker: gives it a more tender, cakey
• 30:26
  Speaker: texture.
• 30:27
  Speaker: Um, so that was a really interesting discovery for us and
• 30:30
  Speaker: was a really fun organizing task for us too.
• 30:34
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 30:34
  Speaker: That's great.
• 30:35
  Speaker: And, um, that's all described in
• 30:37
  Speaker: the table of contents by their
• 30:39
  Speaker: texture.
• 30:39
  Speaker: But then at the beginning of
• 30:40
  Speaker: every chapter, you, um, if
• 30:42
  Speaker: anybody dives into the book,
• 30:43
  Speaker: just be sure to look at the
• 30:45
  Speaker: chapter separator pages because
• 30:47
  Speaker: you have a more in depth table
• 30:48
  Speaker: of contents for each chapter
• 30:50
  Speaker: listing all the cookies in that
• 30:51
  Speaker: chapter.
• 30:52
  Speaker: Um, and that's nice to have.
• 30:54
  Speaker: Also, of course, the index would present those in a different
• 30:57
  Speaker: way, but you can really see like in the chewy gooey section, um,
• 31:01
  Speaker: you have everything from buckwheat to vegan peanut butter
• 31:04
  Speaker: cookies, maple sugar cookies.
• 31:07
  Speaker: Sticky toffee, baked cookies.
• 31:09
  Speaker: One of the things that you talked about in the flavor was
• 31:11
  Speaker: how you took classic desserts and turned them into cookies.
• 31:13
  Speaker: Not just ice cream, but desserts.
• 31:14
  Speaker: Talk a little bit about that concept being pulled forth into
• 31:18
  Speaker: this new cookie book.
• 31:20
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 31:21
  Speaker: So one of the, for example, one of the, um, the desserts that we
• 31:26
  Speaker: love, that really is hard to translate into another format is
• 31:32
  Speaker: a strawberry shortcake.
• 31:34
  Speaker: So, um, who doesn't love a strawberry shortcake?
• 31:37
  Speaker: It's a biscuit.
• 31:37
  Speaker: You get fresh juicy strawberries, whipped cream.
• 31:40
  Speaker: It's messy.
• 31:41
  Speaker: It's delicious.
• 31:42
  Speaker: And we were really curious
• 31:43
  Speaker: about, okay, we love freeze
• 31:46
  Speaker: dried fruit.
• 31:47
  Speaker: Is there a way that we can
• 31:48
  Speaker: recreate a strawberry shortcake
• 31:50
  Speaker: in a cookie using freeze dried
• 31:52
  Speaker: fruit?
• 31:53
  Speaker: So, um, we and we learned, we took what we learned by
• 31:57
  Speaker: organizing our chapter structure the way that we did and thinking
• 31:59
  Speaker: about, okay, um, how are we incorporating butter into flour
• 32:03
  Speaker: to create different textures.
• 32:05
  Speaker: A biscuit is made kind of in the same way as a lot of slice and
• 32:09
  Speaker: baked cookies, and that you're going to cut butter into flour.
• 32:12
  Speaker: Um, in the case of a cookie, you
• 32:14
  Speaker: add more moisture so that it
• 32:15
  Speaker: holds together.
• 32:16
  Speaker: So anyway, we ended up creating this short cookie.
• 32:20
  Speaker: It mimics the texture of a shortcake in that it's a little
• 32:23
  Speaker: bit tender and crumbly.
• 32:24
  Speaker: It's not nearly as big, it's cookie size.
• 32:27
  Speaker: But then we created a really
• 32:28
  Speaker: cute freeze dried strawberry
• 32:31
  Speaker: frosting that you can put on,
• 32:33
  Speaker: and then you can crush a little
• 32:35
  Speaker: bit more freeze dried
• 32:36
  Speaker: strawberries and sprinkle it on
• 32:37
  Speaker: top.
• 32:37
  Speaker: So you get this like very, very
• 32:39
  Speaker: satisfying, really fresh
• 32:41
  Speaker: strawberry flavor.
• 32:42
  Speaker: You can add a dollop of whipped cream if you want, but that
• 32:46
  Speaker: texture of the, of the cookie to really paid homage to that kind
• 32:50
  Speaker: of classic dessert.
• 32:52
  Speaker: I think it's great how you do that and reimagining it.
• 32:55
  Speaker: These desserts as cookie is
• 32:56
  Speaker: probably you take some thinking
• 32:58
  Speaker: to think about, you know, how
• 32:59
  Speaker: you can actually get all of
• 33:01
  Speaker: those types of flavors into a a
• 33:03
  Speaker: small quantity.
• 33:04
  Speaker: And the freeze dried fruit.
• 33:06
  Speaker: Um, gosh, I mean, there's so many different flavors that come
• 33:09
  Speaker: from the fruit that you all use.
• 33:11
  Speaker: I think it's a very, uh, exciting part of the book.
• 33:14
  Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:15
  Speaker: So let's talk about techniques.
• 33:17
  Speaker: What is it that home bakers do that you all have realized that
• 33:21
  Speaker: might be a mistake we make that you think probably if we could
• 33:26
  Speaker: just like, I don't know, I don't know if you compensate for these
• 33:29
  Speaker: mistakes or if you try to anticipate the mistakes, but the
• 33:32
  Speaker: kinds of things that you think, um, really make a difference
• 33:36
  Speaker: when it comes to cookie baking.
• 33:38
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 33:38
  Speaker: I think that, um, one of the biggest things is, um, so you've
• 33:44
  Speaker: made your dough and you're getting ready to bake and the
• 33:47
  Speaker: recipe says, okay, you're going to use two tablespoons of dough
• 33:51
  Speaker: per per cookie.
• 33:53
  Speaker: You take two tablespoons, you make your, your, you scoop them
• 33:59
  Speaker: all out and you're like, okay, I have sixteen cookies instead of
• 34:04
  Speaker: twenty four cookies like the recipe says it should make.
• 34:07
  Speaker: I'm just going to bake them and whatever.
• 34:10
  Speaker: So the biggest thing that I think my biggest takeaway from
• 34:14
  Speaker: this book is that the size of the cookie really matters to the
• 34:17
  Speaker: final texture of the cookie.
• 34:19
  Speaker: So if a recipe says that it
• 34:20
  Speaker: makes twenty four cookies, um,
• 34:23
  Speaker: it's important that I make that
• 34:24
  Speaker: the dough that you get actually
• 34:26
  Speaker: divides out into twenty four
• 34:27
  Speaker: cookies.
• 34:28
  Speaker: So a two tablespoon measure is a pretty inaccurate measuring
• 34:33
  Speaker: device, I would say.
• 34:35
  Speaker: And depending on if there's stir ins, especially that displaces
• 34:39
  Speaker: the dough, the best way that you can actually divvy up your dough
• 34:43
  Speaker: is by using a scale.
• 34:45
  Speaker: So that sounds very, uh, nitpicky and type A, but it
• 34:49
  Speaker: actually is a lot easier at the end of the day.
• 34:51
  Speaker: Once you've made your dough, you can weigh the dough all the way,
• 34:55
  Speaker: the whole way, the whole quantity of dough together.
• 34:57
  Speaker: Quantity of dough.
• 34:58
  Speaker: Exactly.
• 34:59
  Speaker: I recommend switching to grams, which I know some people really
• 35:03
  Speaker: don't like, but it makes the math way easier because you
• 35:06
  Speaker: don't have to think.
• 35:06
  Speaker: And usually it's just a press of a button on the scale.
• 35:10
  Speaker: Exactly.
• 35:10
  Speaker: Yes.
• 35:11
  Speaker: So let's say you weigh your dough.
• 35:14
  Speaker: Okay, it weighs one thousand
• 35:16
  Speaker: grams and I need twenty four
• 35:19
  Speaker: cookies.
• 35:19
  Speaker: One thousand divided by twenty four.
• 35:21
  Speaker: That's how much each cookie should weigh.
• 35:24
  Speaker: So then you can go through and
• 35:26
  Speaker: put each portion on the scale
• 35:27
  Speaker: and then go ahead and make your
• 35:29
  Speaker: choice.
• 35:30
  Speaker: It sounds really, really nitpicky, but I think that is a
• 35:32
  Speaker: really small detail that a lot of people miss.
• 35:35
  Speaker: And then they blame the recipe
• 35:36
  Speaker: because they say, oh, this, this
• 35:38
  Speaker: cookie was overbaked or it was
• 35:40
  Speaker: very crispy.
• 35:42
  Speaker: Well, your cookies were smaller than they should have been or
• 35:45
  Speaker: bigger or whatever it is.
• 35:46
  Speaker: And so the recipe didn't perform
• 35:48
  Speaker: as it should have because they
• 35:49
  Speaker: weren't the cookies weren't the
• 35:51
  Speaker: right size.
• 35:51
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 35:52
  Speaker: I mean, if it says it yields twenty four and you get sixteen,
• 35:54
  Speaker: they're like bigger, they're probably not going to cook in
• 35:58
  Speaker: the time frame that you say.
• 35:59
  Speaker: The texture isn't going to be right.
• 36:01
  Speaker: I mean, it's going to be completely off.
• 36:03
  Speaker: And we talk about baking being a little bit more of an exact,
• 36:06
  Speaker: exacting thing to do.
• 36:08
  Speaker: And I think with cookies, the
• 36:09
  Speaker: bake time has to be one of the
• 36:11
  Speaker: things that probably makes a
• 36:13
  Speaker: huge difference.
• 36:14
  Speaker: And some cookies you take until
• 36:16
  Speaker: they're more brown, some you
• 36:17
  Speaker: probably want to pull out of the
• 36:18
  Speaker: oven before.
• 36:19
  Speaker: Tell us a little bit about the types of things that we need to
• 36:22
  Speaker: pay attention to, to make sure, other than what the recipe says.
• 36:27
  Speaker: But do we leave them on the cookie sheet?
• 36:29
  Speaker: Do we take them off the cookie sheet and put them on a rack?
• 36:32
  Speaker: Uh, what kinds of tips do you have there?
• 36:34
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 36:35
  Speaker: So I think, um, it really depends on the type of cookie
• 36:38
  Speaker: that you're making.
• 36:38
  Speaker: So for like chewy drop cookies, um, I love like textural
• 36:44
  Speaker: contrast on those cookies.
• 36:45
  Speaker: So crisp edge, uh, chewy, gooey, kind of a center.
• 36:48
  Speaker: So for those cookies, I tend to really just look at the very
• 36:52
  Speaker: edge of the cookie.
• 36:54
  Speaker: Once I see golden browning on that very edge.
• 36:56
  Speaker: I know that they're ready to be pulled from the oven.
• 36:59
  Speaker: I. They'll probably still look pretty raw in the cracks, and
• 37:02
  Speaker: that's okay for me.
• 37:03
  Speaker: I find that when I take them out
• 37:05
  Speaker: of the oven, I let them rest on
• 37:06
  Speaker: on the cookie sheet for about
• 37:08
  Speaker: ten minutes.
• 37:09
  Speaker: They will settle.
• 37:10
  Speaker: They'll continue to cook a little bit, and they're totally
• 37:12
  Speaker: fine to eat.
• 37:13
  Speaker: I also find for those kinds of
• 37:15
  Speaker: cookies, I don't want to cool
• 37:16
  Speaker: them completely on the sheet
• 37:18
  Speaker: because they can get a little
• 37:19
  Speaker: bit too crisp and crunchy for
• 37:20
  Speaker: me.
• 37:21
  Speaker: So after about ten minutes, I
• 37:23
  Speaker: usually put them on a wire rack,
• 37:24
  Speaker: um, slice and bake cookies,
• 37:27
  Speaker: crunchy cookies.
• 37:28
  Speaker: Those, I tend to just leave on
• 37:30
  Speaker: the sheet to cook through
• 37:31
  Speaker: entirely or to cool through
• 37:33
  Speaker: entirely because I do want them
• 37:35
  Speaker: crispy, crunchy.
• 37:35
  Speaker: So it's fine if they sit there
• 37:37
  Speaker: on the sheet and get a little
• 37:38
  Speaker: extra firm.
• 37:39
  Speaker: Those cookies I tend to look
• 37:41
  Speaker: for, um, a textural cue,
• 37:44
  Speaker: actually.
• 37:44
  Speaker: I go in and I kind of press it very gently to see, okay, does
• 37:48
  Speaker: it have a little bit of a firm?
• 37:50
  Speaker: Does it still have a little bit
• 37:51
  Speaker: of a give or does it collapse
• 37:52
  Speaker: completely when I press it, you
• 37:54
  Speaker: don't want it to collapse
• 37:55
  Speaker: completely.
• 37:55
  Speaker: It should have.
• 37:56
  Speaker: It should have a little indent, but nothing too dramatic.
• 37:59
  Speaker: Um, yeah.
• 38:00
  Speaker: And looking for just General Browning generally.
• 38:03
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 38:03
  Speaker: Very good.
• 38:04
  Speaker: Because it makes a world of
• 38:06
  Speaker: difference if you're expecting a
• 38:07
  Speaker: kind of a chewy cookie and it
• 38:08
  Speaker: ends up being oh it's
• 38:10
  Speaker: disappointing.
• 38:11
  Speaker: It is disappointing.
• 38:12
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 38:12
  Speaker: So sometimes it is just as
• 38:14
  Speaker: simple as the way it was handled
• 38:16
  Speaker: in terms of the timing, the
• 38:18
  Speaker: cookie sheet, the cooling and
• 38:19
  Speaker: the steps that go along with
• 38:21
  Speaker: that.
• 38:21
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 38:22
  Speaker: So let's talk a little bit about some of the show stopping
• 38:25
  Speaker: cookies in this book.
• 38:27
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 38:29
  Speaker: As opposed to crowd pleasers,
• 38:30
  Speaker: there's different types of
• 38:31
  Speaker: cookies.
• 38:32
  Speaker: Um, but I want to talk about the show stopping cookies because it
• 38:35
  Speaker: is called the new cookie.
• 38:36
  Speaker: I suspect there's some in here
• 38:38
  Speaker: that you think would really, if
• 38:40
  Speaker: someone mastered the recipe or
• 38:42
  Speaker: made it for, uh, an occasion or
• 38:45
  Speaker: for, uh, even for their family,
• 38:47
  Speaker: um, they might really surprise
• 38:49
  Speaker: people.
• 38:50
  Speaker: So what are some ideas that come to mind?
• 38:53
  Speaker: Oh, man.
• 38:53
  Speaker: I mean, there's so many.
• 38:55
  Speaker: I think that one of the ones that I was really excited about,
• 38:58
  Speaker: and it's a little funny to me to lead with this one.
• 39:00
  Speaker: It's I think that, um, there are a lot of cookies in this book,
• 39:05
  Speaker: but there are also a lot of bars in this book.
• 39:08
  Speaker: And I think a bar deserves to have just as much like
• 39:12
  Speaker: excitement as a cookie bar.
• 39:14
  Speaker: I mean, a brownie, a blondie, um, anything eaten like out of
• 39:18
  Speaker: your hand sometimes in this book, we went a little over the
• 39:21
  Speaker: top and it's actually like, maybe you should eat this with a
• 39:23
  Speaker: fork, but they're kind of casual, fun, playful desserts.
• 39:27
  Speaker: So one of my favorites was the Banoffee crunch bars, actually.
• 39:31
  Speaker: So Banoffee pie is like a classic British pie.
• 39:36
  Speaker: It's, um, bananas.
• 39:38
  Speaker: Uh, there's usually like a caramel, there's whipped cream.
• 39:42
  Speaker: It's very like sweet, kind of like overly sweet stuff.
• 39:47
  Speaker: But we took that idea of that
• 39:49
  Speaker: dessert and turned it into a
• 39:50
  Speaker: bar.
• 39:50
  Speaker: So we did a graham cracker base.
• 39:53
  Speaker: We did a banana custard, we did a a streusel, we did whipped
• 39:58
  Speaker: cream, and then we just used a store bought caramel drizzle.
• 40:01
  Speaker: They were so good.
• 40:03
  Speaker: I love banana bread, but I'm often looking for another thing
• 40:07
  Speaker: to do with my bananas.
• 40:09
  Speaker: And this is definitely one that I would make and would share
• 40:12
  Speaker: with neighbors, friends for a gathering, a potluck club, that
• 40:16
  Speaker: kind of a thing.
• 40:17
  Speaker: So this is a type of recipe recipe.
• 40:19
  Speaker: If you have bananas that are heading south a little bit, you
• 40:22
  Speaker: could use those in this.
• 40:23
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 40:24
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 40:24
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 40:24
  Speaker: Definitely.
• 40:25
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 40:25
  Speaker: Because I think a lot of times people are like, oh, it's time
• 40:27
  Speaker: to make banana bread.
• 40:28
  Speaker: But now maybe we can get
• 40:29
  Speaker: everybody to make the banoffee
• 40:31
  Speaker: French bars.
• 40:32
  Speaker: Absolutely.
• 40:33
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 40:34
  Speaker: And what about some of the everyday appeal recipes, some
• 40:37
  Speaker: that you think are, um, weeknight friendly or bakery
• 40:41
  Speaker: quality at home?
• 40:42
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 40:43
  Speaker: Well, I think the like the
• 40:44
  Speaker: iconic one in this book is the
• 40:46
  Speaker: salted malted chocolate chunk
• 40:48
  Speaker: cookie.
• 40:49
  Speaker: Um, that is our spin on a
• 40:53
  Speaker: classic chocolate chip cookie,
• 40:54
  Speaker: but giving it a real bakery
• 40:56
  Speaker: style treatment.
• 40:57
  Speaker: We, we tested this one more than sixty times.
• 41:02
  Speaker: This was the most tested recipe in this book.
• 41:05
  Speaker: It's so delicious.
• 41:06
  Speaker: I have been making it again
• 41:08
  Speaker: since this book came out, as
• 41:11
  Speaker: press has been coming in, and
• 41:14
  Speaker: I'm reminded how delicious it
• 41:16
  Speaker: is.
• 41:16
  Speaker: It's, um, so hyper engineered,
• 41:19
  Speaker: engineered to be this like
• 41:21
  Speaker: really, really big bakery style
• 41:23
  Speaker: cookie.
• 41:23
  Speaker: It uses a quarter cup of cookie
• 41:25
  Speaker: dough per cookie, which is a
• 41:27
  Speaker: ton.
• 41:28
  Speaker: Usually a cookie is about two tablespoons, maybe three.
• 41:32
  Speaker: But, um, we also added malted milk powder to this recipe, to
• 41:36
  Speaker: this cookie dough recipe.
• 41:38
  Speaker: Um, the milk powder added this
• 41:41
  Speaker: really, really nice toffee kind
• 41:43
  Speaker: of flavor to it, but it also
• 41:45
  Speaker: gave it like an added textural
• 41:47
  Speaker: boost.
• 41:48
  Speaker: We found that the flavor of
• 41:50
  Speaker: malted milk powder is fairly
• 41:51
  Speaker: subtle in a cookie, especially
• 41:53
  Speaker: with brown sugar and vanilla and
• 41:54
  Speaker: chocolate.
• 41:55
  Speaker: And so we used a fair amount.
• 41:56
  Speaker: And once we started getting to
• 41:58
  Speaker: the point where we were happy
• 41:59
  Speaker: with the flavor, we noticed that
• 42:00
  Speaker: the malted milk powder was
• 42:02
  Speaker: actually giving us this extra
• 42:03
  Speaker: crunch too.
• 42:04
  Speaker: And it was sort of that like toffee crunch that sticks in
• 42:08
  Speaker: your teeth a little bit.
• 42:09
  Speaker: And malted milk balls.
• 42:10
  Speaker: Exactly.
• 42:11
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 42:12
  Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
• 42:13
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 42:14
  Speaker: So we added the malted milk powder.
• 42:18
  Speaker: And we noticed once we were
• 42:19
  Speaker: adding the malted milk powder,
• 42:20
  Speaker: like I said, the flavor was a
• 42:21
  Speaker: little subtle.
• 42:21
  Speaker: And generally I love dark chocolate for snacking, but we
• 42:26
  Speaker: found dark chocolate really overpowered the malted milk
• 42:28
  Speaker: powder in this recipe.
• 42:30
  Speaker: So we really relied on milk chocolate.
• 42:32
  Speaker: And that was a really big game changer for us to we ended up
• 42:35
  Speaker: going with these really big bakery style bars like Tony's
• 42:39
  Speaker: Chocolonely, and cut them into really big chunks.
• 42:42
  Speaker: And we'd get these pools of
• 42:44
  Speaker: chocolate that we finished with
• 42:45
  Speaker: sea salt.
• 42:45
  Speaker: It was just that recipe is like the most stunning chocolate chip
• 42:50
  Speaker: cookie recipe for me.
• 42:52
  Speaker: Yeah, and the Tony's chocolate
• 42:53
  Speaker: bars, I've seen them more widely
• 42:55
  Speaker: available.
• 42:56
  Speaker: They're everywhere now.
• 42:57
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 42:58
  Speaker: It's great.
• 42:58
  Speaker: They're in the candy aisle.
• 42:59
  Speaker: I think some people get
• 43:01
  Speaker: surprised when they go to the
• 43:02
  Speaker: baking aisle to not see it
• 43:03
  Speaker: there.
• 43:04
  Speaker: But the candy aisle, at least on the East Coast, um, is separate.
• 43:08
  Speaker: And that's where you find Tony's.
• 43:10
  Speaker: You can also use at, um, like whole foods or something.
• 43:13
  Speaker: They often have those cryovac big chocolate blocks.
• 43:16
  Speaker: You can use those too.
• 43:17
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 43:18
  Speaker: And you chop it up and put that into the cookie.
• 43:20
  Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
• 43:21
  Speaker: Sounds great.
• 43:22
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 43:23
  Speaker: Give that a try.
• 43:24
  Speaker: So it's all, you know, it's how people think about cookies.
• 43:26
  Speaker: Holiday time.
• 43:28
  Speaker: Do you have any tips for.
• 43:33
  Speaker: A cookie box if someone's
• 43:35
  Speaker: thinking about combining
• 43:36
  Speaker: cookies.
• 43:37
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 43:38
  Speaker: As a gift.
• 43:39
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 43:39
  Speaker: Any tips that you might have to balance the flavors and the
• 43:43
  Speaker: types of cookie end up gift.
• 43:44
  Speaker: Yeah, well, I think balancing
• 43:46
  Speaker: the flavors, um, is the biggest
• 43:49
  Speaker: challenge.
• 43:50
  Speaker: I think it's also, um, important
• 43:52
  Speaker: to think about shelf life of
• 43:55
  Speaker: cookies.
• 43:55
  Speaker: I think sometimes people get
• 43:57
  Speaker: excited and make cookies that
• 44:00
  Speaker: are delicious, but only last or
• 44:02
  Speaker: are at their best for two days
• 44:04
  Speaker: or something.
• 44:05
  Speaker: And then it's like, oh, well, you know, so I think thinking
• 44:09
  Speaker: about the shelf life of a cookie is really important.
• 44:12
  Speaker: I would also balance chocolate and fruit and classic flavors.
• 44:16
  Speaker: I would also caution against peppermint.
• 44:18
  Speaker: I find if you put peppermint in
• 44:20
  Speaker: a box with other cookies, it
• 44:22
  Speaker: just everything tastes like
• 44:23
  Speaker: peppermint.
• 44:24
  Speaker: So if you're gonna make peppermint cookies, keep them in
• 44:26
  Speaker: their own designated box away from the others.
• 44:29
  Speaker: Um, I also really love the
• 44:33
  Speaker: silica packets that you find in
• 44:35
  Speaker: like a new jacket or something
• 44:36
  Speaker: like that.
• 44:37
  Speaker: Save those.
• 44:38
  Speaker: You can order them online to pop those into your cookie boxes.
• 44:42
  Speaker: They'll extend the shelf life of your cookies a little longer.
• 44:46
  Speaker: That's a good little tip to don't eat them.
• 44:48
  Speaker: Honestly, I think it says it on the package.
• 44:51
  Speaker: Do not eat this packet.
• 44:53
  Speaker: Make sure you let your kids know it's not a topping on the cookie
• 44:57
  Speaker: if it gets stuck to something.
• 44:59
  Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
• 45:00
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 45:01
  Speaker: Um. Yeah, definitely.
• 45:02
  Speaker: I think thinking about color too is fun.
• 45:05
  Speaker: Like if you're really into it, like having a few different
• 45:07
  Speaker: colors is fun.
• 45:08
  Speaker: So, um, anything where there's a finishing component, if you can
• 45:12
  Speaker: add a different color, like go rogue a little bit and have fun.
• 45:16
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 45:17
  Speaker: And I think, um, with this book in particular, in the dried
• 45:20
  Speaker: fruit for freeze dried fruit and all the options for that, and
• 45:25
  Speaker: even the options we've talked about for gingerbread and
• 45:27
  Speaker: molasses cookies, you could have some traditional cookies in
• 45:30
  Speaker: there and really throw in a few that are different and new and
• 45:35
  Speaker: really kind of spice things up.
• 45:37
  Speaker: Um, you've talked about there's
• 45:39
  Speaker: some with tahini, matcha, olive
• 45:40
  Speaker: oil, citrus freeze dried fruit,
• 45:43
  Speaker: then their bar sandwich cookie
• 45:45
  Speaker: thumbprint, bite sized cookies,
• 45:48
  Speaker: showstopper cookies.
• 45:49
  Speaker: I think that's an interesting
• 45:50
  Speaker: concept of like a just one like
• 45:52
  Speaker: centerpiece or showstopper kind
• 45:54
  Speaker: of build your book, your box
• 45:56
  Speaker: around that.
• 45:56
  Speaker: So yeah.
• 45:58
  Speaker: And baking ahead, if, if you
• 45:59
  Speaker: know, shortbread and certain
• 46:00
  Speaker: cookies, they certainly last a
• 46:02
  Speaker: lot longer.
• 46:03
  Speaker: Um, and you can successfully, you know, freeze some cookies.
• 46:08
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 46:08
  Speaker: As long as it's airtight and then you can pull them out and
• 46:11
  Speaker: pack them up.
• 46:12
  Speaker: I personally, when I do cookie boxes, I like to, um, I don't
• 46:17
  Speaker: know, I start around the ninth or tenth of December, but I bake
• 46:19
  Speaker: a, you know, a couple different types of cookies every day for
• 46:22
  Speaker: about ten days.
• 46:23
  Speaker: And then by the end of that,
• 46:24
  Speaker: you're still several days before
• 46:26
  Speaker: Christmas.
• 46:27
  Speaker: You have plenty of variety you can take them to.
• 46:29
  Speaker: Yeah, you can mail them to people, get them there on time.
• 46:32
  Speaker: And, um, I, it's one of my
• 46:34
  Speaker: favorite, like holiday
• 46:35
  Speaker: traditions.
• 46:36
  Speaker: So I can't wait to add some of these cookies that you.
• 46:39
  Speaker: Oh, good.
• 46:40
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 46:40
  Speaker: And the book, uh, to, um, for a few little surprises, something
• 46:44
  Speaker: a little bit different and, uh, definitely fun to make.
• 46:48
  Speaker: Good.
• 46:49
  Speaker: Glad to hear that.
• 46:50
  Speaker: Me too.
• 46:51
  Speaker: So as you, as we're wrapping up, um, we'd like to talk about
• 46:54
  Speaker: cookbooks on this show.
• 46:55
  Speaker: Obviously, any new cookbooks
• 46:57
  Speaker: come your way that have
• 46:58
  Speaker: influenced your time in the
• 47:00
  Speaker: kitchen?
• 47:01
  Speaker: Uh, I know we had one we talked
• 47:02
  Speaker: about the last time, but I
• 47:03
  Speaker: didn't know.
• 47:04
  Speaker: Um, when you're at home and
• 47:06
  Speaker: you're cooking, if you're
• 47:07
  Speaker: relying on anything new that
• 47:09
  Speaker: you'd like to share with our
• 47:10
  Speaker: listeners.
• 47:10
  Speaker: Well, yeah, I mean, so two books come to mind.
• 47:14
  Speaker: Um, one is new and it maybe hasn't so much influenced the
• 47:18
  Speaker: way I cook at home, but I think it's, um, a really interesting
• 47:22
  Speaker: step forward for cookbooks, which is, um, food is a feeling,
• 47:26
  Speaker: um, by Carla Lalli.
• 47:28
  Speaker: Um, I think it, I love the cover of that book because it doesn't
• 47:33
  Speaker: have a recipe on it.
• 47:35
  Speaker: Um, and it's such a strong personal narrative and I love
• 47:41
  Speaker: the idea of food is.
• 47:44
  Speaker: Cookbooks especially are usually so personality driven that to
• 47:49
  Speaker: really put yourself out there and to have your worst moments,
• 47:53
  Speaker: best moments, life captured in a cookbook and thinking about it
• 47:57
  Speaker: through food and tying emotion and love and all the spectrum of
• 48:03
  Speaker: emotions to food.
• 48:05
  Speaker: I love that so much.
• 48:06
  Speaker: So I love that she did that.
• 48:08
  Speaker: Um, and then the other cookbook that I find myself turning to it
• 48:14
  Speaker: a lot, which is not a new cookbook, but represents a whole
• 48:17
  Speaker: genre of cooking for me is, um, Smitten Kitchen's keepers book.
• 48:24
  Speaker: I love that cookbook.
• 48:25
  Speaker: I love Smitten Kitchen.
• 48:28
  Speaker: I think, um, her recipes are so approachable.
• 48:31
  Speaker: They're simple.
• 48:33
  Speaker: They're real.
• 48:34
  Speaker: Um, they are unpretentious and delicious.
• 48:38
  Speaker: And that cookbook for me feels
• 48:40
  Speaker: like a really good like go to
• 48:42
  Speaker: that.
• 48:42
  Speaker: I pick up every six months or so and find something new in or,
• 48:46
  Speaker: um, go back to an old favorite.
• 48:49
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 48:49
  Speaker: And you know, you talk about somebody that kind of started
• 48:52
  Speaker: online when everything like started taking off in terms of
• 48:56
  Speaker: food blogs, that really was just a train, not, not a
• 48:59
  Speaker: professionally trained home cook, a home cook.
• 49:01
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 49:01
  Speaker: And really leaned into that.
• 49:03
  Speaker: But, um, her testing ability and the way her recipes turned out
• 49:08
  Speaker: have always been spot on.
• 49:09
  Speaker: And I've always admired her, Deborah's ability to do that.
• 49:12
  Speaker: And I think that you're right.
• 49:14
  Speaker: I think any of her books that you pick up are usually great.
• 49:18
  Speaker: And I'll definitely link to food
• 49:20
  Speaker: as a Feeling and Smitten
• 49:22
  Speaker: Kitchen's keepers.
• 49:23
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 49:24
  Speaker: Show notes.
• 49:25
  Speaker: I knew you'd have a couple.
• 49:28
  Speaker: You know, it's kind of funny.
• 49:29
  Speaker: When we, uh, started before we started recording, we were
• 49:31
  Speaker: talking about food, noise and, like, the things we think about.
• 49:34
  Speaker: And, you know, some people don't
• 49:36
  Speaker: like to think about food all the
• 49:37
  Speaker: time.
• 49:38
  Speaker: But I think when you work in
• 49:39
  Speaker: this space, you obviously with
• 49:41
  Speaker: ATK, you know, people that write
• 49:43
  Speaker: cookbooks, people that feed
• 49:45
  Speaker: people all the time, run
• 49:47
  Speaker: restaurants, bakeries, cafes,
• 49:49
  Speaker: cook for people privately in
• 49:51
  Speaker: their homes.
• 49:51
  Speaker: I mean, food noise is kind of just like what we think about
• 49:54
  Speaker: all the time.
• 49:55
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 49:56
  Speaker: I didn't know that was a problem.
• 49:58
  Speaker: And now we've got cooking.
• 49:59
  Speaker: I've got cooking noise.
• 50:01
  Speaker: Yes.
• 50:03
  Speaker: Sorry, everyone.
• 50:05
  Speaker: So, um, I think it's wonderful.
• 50:07
  Speaker: So you have once again proven the point that cookies are, uh,
• 50:12
  Speaker: so much fun to talk about.
• 50:14
  Speaker: And it's a beautiful new book,
• 50:16
  Speaker: the New Cookie creative takes on
• 50:18
  Speaker: the classic.
• 50:19
  Speaker: You love it is currently in a bookstore nearby.
• 50:22
  Speaker: I am sure.
• 50:23
  Speaker: Any fun events or anything planned coming up that you want
• 50:26
  Speaker: our listeners to know about?
• 50:28
  Speaker: Um, let's see, there's all kinds of fun stuff coming up.
• 50:31
  Speaker: I think there was a segment on here.
• 50:34
  Speaker: And now recently, I think that there's going to be a really fun
• 50:37
  Speaker: event in Boston.
• 50:39
  Speaker: Flour Bakery cookies on the Commons.
• 50:42
  Speaker: Um, flour bakery is a local chain.
• 50:45
  Speaker: Um, uh, uh, Diane.
• 50:49
  Speaker: Joanne Chang not Diane.
• 50:51
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 50:51
  Speaker: Joanne Chang, uh, owns, she's got a few cookbooks.
• 50:55
  Speaker: Um, she's a good friend of ATK,
• 50:57
  Speaker: so there's going to be something
• 50:58
  Speaker: really, really fun in the works
• 50:59
  Speaker: there.
• 51:00
  Speaker: It's a community fundraiser benefiting no kids hungry, and
• 51:03
  Speaker: it'll be great.
• 51:04
  Speaker: Great.
• 51:04
  Speaker: And if people want to learn
• 51:05
  Speaker: about the events and things that
• 51:07
  Speaker: are going on related to the
• 51:08
  Speaker: book, where can they check that
• 51:10
  Speaker: out?
• 51:11
  Speaker: Just, uh, I think if they just
• 51:12
  Speaker: Google new cookie America's test
• 51:14
  Speaker: kitchen, that would bring them
• 51:15
  Speaker: there.
• 51:16
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 51:16
  Speaker: Okay.
• 51:17
  Speaker: And check out the America's test
• 51:18
  Speaker: kitchen Instagram at test
• 51:20
  Speaker: kitchen.
• 51:21
  Speaker: Okay.
• 51:21
  Speaker: And, um, any other way they can connect with you online?
• 51:24
  Speaker: Steph.
• 51:25
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 51:25
  Speaker: You can find me on Instagram.
• 51:26
  Speaker: I'm at Pixley picks.
• 51:28
  Speaker: My last name is Pixley.
• 51:29
  Speaker: Um, and, uh, you can see me on the test kitchen website.
• 51:34
  Speaker: I often do reels for the test kitchen social media as well.
• 51:37
  Speaker: Great.
• 51:38
  Speaker: Very good.
• 51:39
  Speaker: Well, home cooking alive and well.
• 51:42
  Speaker: Yes.
• 51:43
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 51:44
  Speaker: I think that's great.
• 51:45
  Speaker: I think it is.
• 51:46
  Speaker: And I mean, everybody's got to eat.
• 51:47
  Speaker: If we're not eating out, we have
• 51:48
  Speaker: to do something for food
• 51:49
  Speaker: preparation.
• 51:50
  Speaker: Um, yeah.
• 51:51
  Speaker: So I really appreciate all the work that you guys do.
• 51:55
  Speaker: It's such a different kind of book.
• 51:56
  Speaker: It's not like I said, it's not driven by just one person, but
• 51:59
  Speaker: it's driven by a philosophy that you have at ATK.
• 52:02
  Speaker: It certainly comes through loud and clear in this new book.
• 52:06
  Speaker: And thank you for all the work
• 52:07
  Speaker: that you all are doing to help
• 52:08
  Speaker: us.
• 52:09
  Speaker: Home cooks have great success.
• 52:12
  Speaker: Thank you so much.
• 52:13
  Speaker: I appreciate you having me on.
• 52:14
  Speaker: Yeah, thanks.
• 52:15
  Speaker: Talk to you soon.
• 52:16
  Speaker: Maybe in a year and a half.
• 52:17
  Speaker: We'll see what's going on.
• 52:19
  Speaker: All right.
• 52:20
  Speaker: Sounds good.
• 52:20
  Speaker: Okay.
• 52:21
  Speaker: Take care.
• 52:22
  Speaker: Talk to you soon.
• 52:22
  Speaker: You, too.
• 52:23
  Speaker: Bye.
• 52:23
  Speaker: Bye bye.
• 52:24
  Speaker: Thank you so much for joining us today for this episode of the
• 52:27
  Speaker: Cookbook Love Podcast.
• 52:29
  Speaker: again.
• 52:29
  Speaker: All the links can be found in the show notes at w w w dot
• 52:32
  Speaker: cookbook dot co.
• 52:34
  Speaker: And if you are interested in
• 52:36
  Speaker: writing a cookbook of your own,
• 52:38
  Speaker: please check out the free
• 52:40
  Speaker: Cookbook Writing Masterclass
• 52:41
  Speaker: called How to Get Paid to Write
• 52:43
  Speaker: a Cookbook.
• 52:44
  Speaker: It is designed specifically for
• 52:46
  Speaker: food or nutrition experts, and
• 52:48
  Speaker: you can check that out at w w w
• 52:51
  Speaker: dot cookbook writers academy dot
• 52:53
  Speaker: com.
• 52:56
  Speaker: So that's it for today's episode of the Cookbook Love Podcast.
• 52:59
  Speaker: This is your host, Maggie Greene.
• 53:01
  Speaker: And until next time, have a
• 53:02
  Speaker: great day and keep loving your
• 53:04
  Speaker: cookbooks.
• 53:09
  Speaker: Thanks for listening to the Cookbook Love podcast.
• 53:12
  Speaker: You can find out more information at w w w dot dot co.